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ZDogg MD

Zubin Damania, MD is the director of healthcare development for Downtown Project Las Vegas, an ambitious urban revitalization movement spearheaded by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh. Formerly a hospitalist at Stanford, he maintained a shadow career making videos created under the pseudonym ZDoggMD. Nearly a million views later, he continues to focus on educating patients and providers alike while mercilessly satirizing our dysfunctional healthcare system.

Being a thought leader ain’t easy. So I’ve chosen to be a thought follower. But every now and then I write down some thoughts, mostly stolen, and someone publishes them. The AAMC Reporter recently published just such a piece. BUT…they edited out all the horrible humorous bits. So I’ve included the unmolested version here. And I’m even gonna throw in Turntable Health Cribs, a quick MTV walkthrough of our clinic, courtesy of Fremont East Studios. Shazaam! Video Source Rebooting Primary Care by ZDoggMD For the better part of a decade, I practiced inpatient hospital medicine at a large academic center (the name isn’t important, but it rhymes with Afghanistan…ford). I used to play a game with the med students and housestaff: let’s estimate how many of our inpatients actually didn’t need hospitalization, had they simply received effective outpatient preventative care. Over the years, our totals were almost never less than 50%. For my fellow math-challenged Americans: that’s ONE HALF! Clearly, if there were actually were any incentives to prevent disease, they sure as heck weren’t working. In a country whose care pyramid is upside down—more specialists than primary care docs, really?—we’re squandering our physical, emotional, and economic health while spending more per capita than anyone else. Four percent of our healthcare dollars go towards primary care, with much of the remaining 95% paying for the failure of primary care. (The missing 1%? Doritos.) Worse still, the...

Just Can’t Get Enough Fact: the easy availability of internet porn at a young age presents the Millennial generation (and others) with potentially serious issues. See this excellent article in The Atlantic. Fact: we don’t entirely understand the effects of this hyper-stimulating, artificial reality on developing brains, nor do we understand the long term social and sexual effects. See this article in Salon and watch the TED talk at the bottom of this post. Fact: we ignore and stigmatize this issue at our peril. If healthcare providers can’t talk about this openly, who can? Just Can’t Get It Up So, Josh.0 and I decided that the time was ripe for an important musical parody PSA on the perils of excessive internet pornography use. Thanks to Facebook fan Terisa Lynn Foster Flick for winning our “obscure medical condition” contest with “spheno-palatine-ganglioneuralgia”! And props to the Black Eyed Peas for their song “Just Can’t Get Enough” which is the perfect substrate for this, uh, sticky topic! Featured image from Flickr...

“Frozen” Indeed. It’s no secret that I’ve got a couple of daughters, the ZPupps. Which means it’s also no secret that I—like so many fathers worldwide—am routinely forced to suffer through the slightly off-key vocal stylings of pre-teens belting out “Let It Go” from the smash Disney musical Frozen. Repeatedly. Pretty much everywhere. And I’ve had it! Look, it’s not that I think the song’s theme of embracing urinary and fecal incontinence isn’t noble—we all know that teaching young people to go ahead and “let it go” instead of trying to fight the urge would certainly be a boon to the Diaper Industrial Complex (DIC), which could now expand its market well into the ‘tween demographic. It just makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is how Disney could completely ignore and alienate the lucrative 40-90 year old male demographic. And while incontinence can certainly occur here, this cohort is much more concerned with the opposite problem. Any man with half a prostate would agree! (well, assuming the half-prostate in question was larger than a normal full prostate, but now we’re splitting hairs) So I’ve written and performed—once again with the help of audio whiz and Rabbit rock star Devin Moore—an emotional, epic anthem…about urinary retention. Unfortunately, my daughters have begun to sing my version. At school. I wish Child Protective Services would just let it go. Download the...

Power. Politics. Polio. Dr. Underwood returns to clinic to grapple with a mother who’s been taking Jenny McCarthy’s advice on vaccines. You can imagine how that goes down. Starring Nina Wright from Turntable Health. “Money is the Mercedes in the MD parking lot, depreciating from the second it’s purchased. Power is a stone hospital wing that stands for centuries.” -Dr. Frank...

Power. Politics. Prostates. Dr. House and Francis Underwood are more alike than you think. Two great tastes that go great together. Think House of Cards meets House of God. Episode 1 of the ZDoggMD “Original” series. A teaser of the coming “season”: Our hero chats with an antivax mom, reviews a cryptic radiology report, calls a surgical consult, interviews a medical school applicant, and has a discussion with a hospital executive about his Press Ganey scores. Give us your own ideas for episodes in the comments below, sign up for our email list in the contact section at the bottom of the page so you never miss a video, and don’t forget: ZDoggMD is always down to come and talk in your...

Fact: Doctor and comedian Ken Jeong recently did a video extolling the virtues of using the Bee Gee’s Stayin’ Alive to keep the correct timing of chest compressions during CPR. Fact: Disco is dead. That’s why SphincterTone Records, in conjunction with Kluver-Bucy Productions, is proud to present the greatest collection of CPR party hits since Freedom Rock! With celebrity endorsements by Doc Quixote…AND his sister Gabriella, this compilation is guaranteed to become the “Gold” standard in resuscitainment for decades to come! Operators are standing by! No C.O.D., order...